Among the many good points to “Prophet’s Prey,” a new documentary about polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs, is that its celebrity connections don’t get in the way of the story being told.

Author Jon Krakauer, of “Into the Wild” fame, gets his share of screen time. He wrote about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in his 2003 book “Under the Banner of Heaven.” That was shortly after Jeffs took the reins of the Mormon splinter group (founded 1929) from his father, church president (and therefore prophet) Rulon Jeffs, but before the new patriarch took an already isolated community and dragged it further from modernity.

Also, and not incidentally, this was before the younger Jeffs was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List and later convicted of child sexual assault.

While researching the FLDS, Krakauer forged an alliance with private investigator Sam Brower, who wrote about his seven years digging into the church in a 2011 e-book, also titled “Prophet’s Prey” (and with an intro from Krakauer — a nice marketing coup).

While Brower, too, gets his screen time, the film very much remains in the hands of its director, Amy Berg, who came to fame herself as the maker of “Deliver Us From Evil.” That 2006 documentary was about the American priest Oliver O’Grady, who admitted to sexually abusing two dozen children, but also about the cover-up by the Catholic hierarchy that protected him.

The narrative that Berg has assembled will not be the definitive story of Warren Jeffs. It only gives a cursory nod to all the meticulous work by law enforcement and prosecutors that led to his downfall. But it draws on enough inside voices — or, rather, previously inside voices, since cast aside by the prophet — to paint a chilling portrait of a megalomaniac.

The most chilling of all these voices is Jeffs’ own, preserved in tape-recorded sermons and prophesying. The tone is soft-spoken to the point of being hypnotic, yet the content is fire and brimstone, a constant drumbeat of “Obey the prophet! Obey the prophet!”

Berg paces the story like a horror film, and rightly so. The story of how Jeffs squeezed his flock into submission, even devotion, is truly terrifying. Many of the worst details explain why the man is in prison. Others may not have been proven in a court of law, but the case that Berg lays out is overwhelming.

It is not just another human anomaly, however. As the film makes clear, the anti-establishment rhetoric of isolationist cults forces their retreat from society, giving almost absolute power to the leader. Compounding the danger is the dynastic instinct; the result here is a microcosm of, say, North Korea.

No, “Prophet’s Prey” isn’t definitive, but it is compelling and occasionally even cinematic. And it benefits from the presence of one more droppable name, indie singer-songwriter Nick Cave, who shares credit for the ominous score with Warren Ellis and narrates ably but unobtrusively among the many talking heads.

If nothing else, this documentary is scarier than any supernatural horror flick. And the assertion that Jeffs has continued to be revered as infallible patriarch even after his incarceration is the scariest thing of all.

Reach the reviewer at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896.